We reached Mars with probes 50 years ago. I’m not in any way trying to denigrate the amazing achievements of the Mars rovers. But the fact remains that a human crew could have done all that and more (like drill a hole) in a few weeks at best.
And 59 years after landing on the moon we’ve just been watching Space X rockets explode instead of going back on rockets NASA proved it could engineer with slide rules and drafting tables.
Relying on Starship as a moon lander is one of the most hare brained decisions of NASA in recent years. OTOH, it would be perfectly feasible to get a moon mission going using Falcon 9 as the launch vehicle.
SpaceX had a brilliant track record for safety with their novel reusable rocket boosters. Even the first couple of Starship prototypes were incredibly successful, massively exceeding mission goals.
Unfortunately Musk seems to have entirely lost the sauce and is killing all of his companies, diving into conspiracy nonsense while funding an incredibly unpopular election campaign, gutting the federal government and tanking the economy by single-handedly raising the national unemployment rate through expensive and unnecessary layoffs. And during that same time Starship has become incredibly unreliable with prototypes not only failing to reach orbit but even exploding on the pad before attempting liftoff.
Meanwhile competitors are popping up around the world trying to recreate SpaceX’s falcon rocket boosters, and many are starting to achieve success. Musk could have owned space but instead gestures wildly at everything and nothing in particular
Musk should have stepped down from all of his companies about 5-10 years ago and let them continue on without him. Maybe he’d run a funky tiny/manufactured home startup to try to “disrupt housing” or an online healthcare startup to try to “disrupt healthcare” or maybe he’d be running a drone startup to “disrupt warfare” or maybe he’d just sail off into the sunset impregnating as many women as he can convince to carry his kids while shitposting away on twitter. We can only dream only such an alternate reality
We reached Mars with probes 50 years ago. I’m not in any way trying to denigrate the amazing achievements of the Mars rovers. But the fact remains that a human crew could have done all that and more (like drill a hole) in a few weeks at best.
And 59 years after landing on the moon we’ve just been watching Space X rockets explode instead of going back on rockets NASA proved it could engineer with slide rules and drafting tables.
Relying on Starship as a moon lander is one of the most hare brained decisions of NASA in recent years. OTOH, it would be perfectly feasible to get a moon mission going using Falcon 9 as the launch vehicle.
SpaceX had a brilliant track record for safety with their novel reusable rocket boosters. Even the first couple of Starship prototypes were incredibly successful, massively exceeding mission goals.
Unfortunately Musk seems to have entirely lost the sauce and is killing all of his companies, diving into conspiracy nonsense while funding an incredibly unpopular election campaign, gutting the federal government and tanking the economy by single-handedly raising the national unemployment rate through expensive and unnecessary layoffs. And during that same time Starship has become incredibly unreliable with prototypes not only failing to reach orbit but even exploding on the pad before attempting liftoff.
Meanwhile competitors are popping up around the world trying to recreate SpaceX’s falcon rocket boosters, and many are starting to achieve success. Musk could have owned space but instead gestures wildly at everything and nothing in particular
Musk should have stepped down from all of his companies about 5-10 years ago and let them continue on without him. Maybe he’d run a funky tiny/manufactured home startup to try to “disrupt housing” or an online healthcare startup to try to “disrupt healthcare” or maybe he’d be running a drone startup to “disrupt warfare” or maybe he’d just sail off into the sunset impregnating as many women as he can convince to carry his kids while shitposting away on twitter. We can only dream only such an alternate reality
He got a taste for power and got addicted.
Weak.